Too much of the early discussion today (for those with time to check in at Hot Air on a holiday) has been on depressing topics about the wavering future of democracy, the rending of the social fabric and other Gloomy Gus topics. But it’s important to focus on the positive and believe in the limitless potential of both capitalism and technology. I, for one, welcome our new technocrat overlords, and with that in mind we will check in on braniac wiseguy Mark Zuckerberg. He’s got some hot projects in mind for the coming century and one is particularly exciting. Pretty soon we can do away with all of our phones and tablets. We’re all going to be communicating telepathically.

Internet satellites, virtual reality, even real working AI: It all pales in comparison to the future that Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has in mind.

In a Q&A session with site users on Tuesday, the 31-year-old said he envisions a world where people — presumably Facebook users — don’t need these types of communication intermediaries. Instead, they’ll communicate brain-to-brain, using telepathy.

“One day, I believe we’ll be able to send full rich thoughts to each other directly using technology,” Zuckerberg wrote in response to a question about what’s next for Facebook. “You’ll just be able to think of something and your friends will immediately be able to experience it too.”

But hold up: Is that even possible? And is that something anyone actually wants?

Apparently it’s sort of possible. We can map brain activity and monitor the tiny electrical signals which we produce in our noggins. It’s a fairly inexact science in most cases, but as the article points out we’ve done some fairly amazing experiments with mice. The mice were only the beginning, though. The real brain trusts (pun intended) who have been working on this have already taken it into the human realm. For a few years now we’ve had wheelchairs for the severely injured which can navigate based on nothing more than the feedback they receive from the user’s brain waves. Check out this short video.

Who knows what the future holds? In any event, this is just something I’m personally interested in. You guys mentioned that you might have time in your day for an open thread this afternoon, so take it wherever you like. And happy 4th of July once again!